FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN: You, me — any parent — would risk it all to cross the border to secure a better future for our families.

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN: You, me — any parent — would risk it all to cross the border to secure a better future for our families.:

FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN: You, me — any parent — would risk it all to cross the border to secure a better future for our families.

OP-ED BY SUSAN STRAIGHT IN THE LA TIMES | HTTP://LAT.MS/VTEHVE

30 Oct 2011 - In 1979, in my hometown of Riverside, my father came home one evening with news from the linen plant where he worked. A group of women whose job it was to wash, dry, iron and stack hospital linen had been taken away by immigration officials that day. They were undocumented workers from Mexico and would be deported.

I was 18 when I heard this, and I couldn't stop thinking about the likelihood that the deported women had left children behind. What if one had been forced to leave her children with a neighbor she didn't like or trust, just for that morning,